We met at Annie's where the story under
discussion was Clive's offering The
Emerald Ring. Reaching new heights in the refreshments department, Annie
regaled us with prosecco and home-made lemon cake. This was by way of
celebrating Annie’s success in being selected to read one of her stories at
Malvern Theatre next week as part of their As
You Read It evening. We all look forward to Annie's performance and wish
her all the best for Thursday.
Clive read The Emerald Ring with gusto – a curious and compelling tale which
left us all wondering how much of it was true family history and how much of
it pure fiction. Like Wuthering Heights
and Robinson Crusoe the kernel of the
story (as recounted in the carpenter's tale) is given an added air of
verisimilitude by being a story within a story within a story. Rob commented
that he wondered whether this was a well-told tale woven around a nugget of
truth, and alluded to the genre of creative non-fiction. Linda said how much
she loved the carpenter's tale at the heart of the story and really wanted it
to be true while Chris admitted that, if it were pure fiction, he had been completely
taken in. We all agreed with Chris that
the 18th-century language was so convincing it almost had to be true. Singled
out for particular praise was the comment, attributed to the Truro magistrate William
Fletcher: ' ... ofttimes the repast was unrecognisable to me though, judged by
taste, it was invariably fish and when distinguishably not fish, then the taste
was yet fish...’
So, how much of Clive’s story was pure
fancy? Clive explained that Lily Brydges really was his grandmother and the
parts referring to her were all true. The wrecking of the fleet was also a true
story around which Clive had embroidered The
Emerald Ring. Fundamentally the story was genuine, but Clive himself was the
author of both William Fletcher's statements and the carpenter's tale embedded
within it. It seems Clive reads Samuel
Pepys's Diary every day for fun, so much so that he appears to have
absorbed the language of the late 17th and early 18th century. If this continues, he may insist we refer to him as Squire Eardley.
In our news roundup, Annie has of course
been practising reading her story out loud in readiness for Thursday.
Chris managed to sell out Stafford Gatehouse and sold 31 copies of Why Don't You Fly? to
the enthusiastic audience. Linda continues to work on her novel and is trying
to get the chapter lengths down to 1,500-2000 words as her mentor suggests
this is a more suitable chapter length for a book with such commercial
potential as Linda’s. Rob was feeling more discouraged with his work in
progress but has managed to sell eight copies of Olympic Mind Games to a local school that is using it as a ‘reader’
for Year Six children. Clive has had further publishing success with a recipe
for Cinnamon Crumb Cake in Take a Break
magazine. With the popularity of The Hairy
Bikers (pictured), we did wonder whether Clive might be cooking up a plan to launch
himself as The Grumpy Baker.
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